- There it is guys,
the arachnid wall from start to finish.
(funky music)
Hey, good morning everybody and welcome to the vlog.
I'm here with my little girl, Zombie,
the Chilean rose hair tarantula, and yes,
I am still looking at this tarantula rack behind me.
I have finally circled back around,
and we're gonna make up some of the setups today
so that we can get ready
to start moving these tarantulas in.
But before I do that, I do have to fix a couple fixes,
I kinda screwed it up a little bit.
So, for those of you people out there
that are loving tarantulas,
or for those of you that fear them,
and might wanna try to get over your fear,
you get a chance to see what we're gonna do
with this Tarantula wall today and fixture out
some actual cages for them to make them look beautiful.
You excited, Zombie?
So let me go ahead and explain what I mean by "fixes".
So before we start to fixture out some of the
tarantula cages and getting ready to actually transfer
tarantulas over into this new rack here
in the next day or two,
I want to show you that I did kind of screw it up.
I made a major mistake.
What I did was I measured these tanks and I made
enough space for the tanks, the problem is,
is if you see there's a little extra leg on each side here,
I didn't account for that.
So, you can see, there's suppose to be four tanks,
but if you can see, the fourth one won't fit.
So I really racked my brain like "How can I do this
"without ripping the entire rack apart?".
'Cause obviously I've already fixtured all the rocks out
and stuff like that, so I think I'm gonna do
is just take this 2x4, marry it right up to this 2x4,
like this, real simple,
and then all I have to do is cut this here
and cut this here, and then I can slide this down.
I'll have to add a few more support braces in between,
no big deal.
I also got some LED lights that I could hang in here
because you don't wanna go with UV lights
with tarantulas, it's bad for them.
So we'll get the lighting done, get the fix over here,
the extra supports, then I can actually start working on
fixturing out the actual backdrop.
Then once the backdrops are all cured
and we've fixtured that all out,
we can put in the bedding and all kinds of other decorations
and then we could actually move tarantulas in here,
again, within the next day or two.
So I've got my work cut out for me today
but it's gonna be awesome.
This whole thing was like a perfect example
of not freaking out about situations.
Obviously I built it, I put all this rock fixture on it,
and then I realized I had the wrong sizes,
so rather than like, tripping out and losing my mind,
I thought, "Let's just take a minute,
"let's think of the easiest fix possible"
and it took me a day or two
to figure out the best way to do it.
Originally, I was gonna kinda tear this side apart,
all kinds of stuff, and then I thought,
"Oh, we've got a pretty simple fix".
Yeah, it's not exactly perfect, but it's gonna work
and once it's all done, you'll never know the difference.
But the first thing I have to do
is actually remove all of these tanks
so I can start working on the rack, not to mention,
I'm gonna have to take them out to put the backdrops anyways
so all the tanks out, set over there,
then I can start working.
(funky music)
Now I can get started by, again, marrying this 2x4
right up to here and cutting these things out
so that I have the space I need for the tanks
to actually fit in the rack.
So I thought you guys tuned in to the vlog today
to get a woodshop lesson, but the truth is
this is just what I have to do, so again,
just the simplest fix is to just marry this board
right up against this board, nail it in,
do the same thing on the backside.
(funky music)
And again, because I have to be able to extend this over,
I just have to cut this out here, this out up there,
and then the tanks can actually slide over to this one here,
kinda solves the problem, again, behind all the rock wall,
you'll never even know that I did this
if I didn't share it with you guys,
you guys would never know.
Now, all I have to do is actually cut here and here
and actually remove this part, and that will give me
the space I need for the tanks to fit in.
(handsaw buzzing)
(hammer pounding)
And that's basically it, now I just have to repeat
the same process but now you can see,
I gained that extra inch and a half of space
that I needed, so that all the tanks fit.
I know some of you may be getting bored,
but hey, this is part of my daily routine.
I'm so excited to get this arachnid wall done,
so we have to just kinda push through all the steps,
and I wanted to bring you guys along.
Next up, is we have to just mount this LED light,
right up here in each level, again, these are LED lights,
which are fine for tarantulas, you don't want UV,
it's gonna be bright enough where you're gonna
be able to see them but not so bright that they're
actually freaked out because tarantulas do actually prefer
a little bit more dim lighting,
so regardless, let's go and mount these things.
(funky music)
Alright, so we have our first lights on.
I just have to do these next bottom rows here,
and then the lights are all set.
Everything is set as far as the length goes,
and then we're off to the cages to start to decorate,
the fun part. (funky music)
And that concludes the boring part of the vlog.
Now the fun part, we're gonna go ahead
and start taking each individual cage,
putting a backdrop in it, starting to kinda mold it.
And then, later on today, we'll be able to actually
put bedding in and stuff like that
and it should be good to go.
Not to mention, a bunch of decorations
so that they look really cool.
The idea is to make the cages look as good as I can,
that tarantulas be as happy as they can be,
but then at the same time, we don't want to go overboard
to where you never see the tarantulas
so that's the fine line we have to walk.
So I have Laurie with me because
she's a little bit more creative than I am.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna
use some of the material we have from Universal Rocks,
just a backdrop and over here and basically,
just kinda cut a backdrop.
I'll show you guys how you can use foam
to kinda contour, 'cause the thing
that a lot of people make mistake--
Let's say you have a flat piece like this,
a lot of people make the mistake of just
literally, sticking it to the back,
sticking it to the sides and that being it.
But if you can contour, make it wave a little more,
it feels a little bit more natural.
So all we have to do is measure this, cut a piece,
and then start to work from there.
So here's where the artistic ness comes in.
I cut some of this backing, which is a polyuria,
which is kinda like the bed liner stuff,
but it looks like rock, now we have to put it in here
and kinda make it look as natural as possible.
It's a little bit of a trick but hopefully,
with Laurie's help, I can make this look good
and we only have to do this on 13 cages.
(funky music)
So the first thing you can do is you can take like,
pieces of styrofoam and you can put it back here.
Ultimately, what we're gonna do is
take spray foam and spray behind it.
And that's what will ultimately hold it all
together when it dries, it'll be like a rock,
and that way nothing can get behind it and stuff like that.
But for now, this is just the base that we have,
now we have to start molding it to kinda look more natural.
'Cause right now it doesn't really look very natural at all.
I'm literally gonna take the crappy backdrop
that this thing came with, and this is just foam,
I mean, this wouldn't last
probably two months if you were lucky.
I'm just gonna cut a couple chunks of this out
to kinda use it as like backing behind here
to just make it a little bit more, ya know,
a little bit more dynamic.
I'm not exactly sure where I'm gonna put it right now.
I'll put it back here for a little thing.
No, yeah, definitely over here.
Put it around the perimeter like that.
And you can start to see, like, as you get that
dynamic of a little bit more flow, ya know,
you got a little bit of a spot here, over here,
it just starts to look a little bit more, ya know,
it looks a little bit more natural 'cause in nature,
there's not a lot of flat lines, ya know what I mean.
So just continue to work it until
you feel like you have a good product,
then use the spray foam and you foam it all in.
So I'm pretty happy with the way it looks right now.
I think it looks pretty natural,
especially once we start adding
decorations and stuff like that.
So now what I have to do is I'm gonna cut a couple boards
that I can put across from here to here,
as well as over here to here,
and that's just gonna keep things held
while this spray foam actually dries
and then we can start adding some other stuff.
(funky music)
And then of course, we use these boards
to just kinda keep everything in place.
As that foam heals, it's gonna be like a rock.
We'll have to go back and just fill in the cracks,
make sure that there's nothing that
the spiders can get behind but that's the base.
I know it doesn't look as pretty as you think, but trust me,
once it's done, it's really good,
and we have to start with the base
before we can move on to everything else.
We can add decorations, and we'll cover all this up
with the pigment that looks just like it
so you won't see any of the foam,
you won't see any of the silicone,
even the seam right here, we'll just seam that right out,
and that should be really good.
So that is the first cage done, only 12 or 13 to go.
Again, you don't want every cage to look just alike,
so what we're doing is we're taking
the same piece that we kinda curled around,
but now we're taking a different piece here
that has a lot more rocks and crevices,
we're just gonna kinda marry the two.
And again, once we're done, we can silicone this edge,
put some pigment on it, and it'll literally blend together
and you'll just think that it's the same rock base.
But just again, we've got three different pieces.
One piece here, a little piece here,
and a little piece here,
and then we'll kinda mold this together.
Again, foam it in so that it's secure
and that should be cage number two.
(funky music)
Cage number two backdrop done.
Lookin' pretty good over here,
I think it's gonna look really cool
with that really cool rock fixture over there.
That's gonna be absolutely awesome, so again,
this'll dry maybe in a couple hours,
then we have to go back and do the silicone
and basically feather everything out with the pigment.
And then we can ultimately put all the bedding in
and other decorations so this is just
the first step in a long process.
(funky music)
And again, what you can do with it really is only
limited by your creativity.
We use the more wood finish on this one
rather than the cement and just using different backdrops,
adding little pieces, the curves and the contour,
and stuff like that, just make it look that much more real.
I mean, what I was thinking with this is like,
"Where would I find a tarantula?"
And then I tried to make the backdrop look like
something like I would find it in the wild.
So as we're kinda getting things to the finished stage,
we foamed all the stuff in, we made kind of cool designs
and stuff like that, but obviously, Laurie has to go back,
first you have to deal with this,
cut away all of the foam so that everything works,
not to mention, it, you know, this is obviously
all extra here, you can see how she
cut it away right down here.
And then she actually goes back,
she'll put silicone on it and then the pigment
that actually blends things.
So this is the artistic part where it looks good.
(laughs) (funky music)
Again, the process is pretty simple really.
Laurie just puts a bunch of clear silicone all over
the place where she wants to actually blend the pigment in
and basically what you wanna do is kinda keep it natural
like that, some mistakes that people make is they'll
actually take and smear with the finger,
thinking you want to smooth it out.
In actuality you want it to be kinda bumpy.
That's when she takes this brush and the pigment,
it actually can help smooth out,
makes it look much more natural.
But you can see she's just covering
that entire area with silicone,
then she'll go back with the pigment.
(funky music)
And you can basically see the seam, more or less,
just completely disappears,
and then you just continue to touch up
'til it looks really natural, and kinda something you would
find out in the wild, so to speak.
So Laurie has a bunch to do here,
Bruce is over cleaning up,
getting ready to start putting all of the bedding in
and stuff like that, so we'll just keep on continuing on.
(funky music)
So I am getting more and more excited
as we're getting closer to the finish
of the tarantula wall.
These are the fixtured out cages that we've done so far.
They're all in the racks, now you can kinda
see all of these things obviously,
now we have to put all of the substrate in,
which I'm really referring to Bruce on all of that.
Bruce knows a lot about tarantulas,
so he knows what substrates to use,
how deep we have to do, all of the other things.
Obviously when it comes to the Goliath bird-eater,
we don't want it to climb up and fall,
so we have to the the substrate kinda thick,
and we can't have anything hard, and that's the way
we'll do throughout the whole thing.
So that is the last thing we have to do now is get all
the substrate, the decorations in.
Oh my god, the tarantula wall is starting to come together.
let me know in the comments what you guys think so far.
And when it comes to the bedding, what are we using, Bruce?
- Right now, we're actually using vermiculite,
and perlite to add to our soil and main reason for it
is vermiculite here holds humidity really well in the soil
and perlite will help drain it to keep any mold from,
you know, getting up.
- Gotcha, so it's a perlite, vermiculite, and soil,
no chemicals, no fertilizers in any of 'em,
and then you just mix it up and then that's our base
for our tarantulas.
- So, we're gonna start out right all up here,
to the top, and we're gonna work our way down
and with the tarantulas that are more needed of humidity
and things like that, we're gonna use this soil right here.
And any tarantulas that are like a desert-dwelling species,
or something that's just not gonna really
like the water too much, is gonna be more reptile prime.
- [Vlog Host] Gotcha, okay. (funky music)
And there it is guys, the start of the tarantula wall,
or at least getting going.
I'm excited, I can't wait,
and what we're gonna probably do is actually,
I'm gonna bombard you guys with tarantula content here,
comin' up we're actually gonna do a tarantula feeding vlog,
where we feed everything, 'cause we want to feed them
before we move 'em in because often times,
once you move a tarantula, it goes off of food for a while.
So we figure we'll give them one meal,
we'll show you guys and do a vlog about that.
And then we'll actually do a vlog
where we're moving the tarantulas
into all of these enclosures too.
With any luck, by the end of the weekend,
we will have tarantulas on display at the Reptarium.
(funky music)
And I think one of the real tricks here
is gonna be kinda setting up a bunch of the cages
to where they're naturalistic,
the animals themselves are really really happy in it,
and can kinda get some hiding and all that stuff.
But we don't want to make it so overbearing
where you can't see 'em,
so that is gonna be the trick, Bruce.
So you got your idea, you're gonna put some foliage on--
- So I'm gonna try and make this look
like a small little tree, but I don't want it to,
like, cover up too much, 'cause I want that tarantula
to be able to be seen, I wanna be able to
step up on a ladder, take one look in there
and see the tarantula.
I also want these guys to feel safe.
That's the main priority here
and obviously secondary is make sure people can see 'em.
- [Brian] Exactly.
(funky music)
So we're moving on to the big cages first.
So I see you're kinda building it up,
what's the idea behind that?
- So, the basic idea is these guys all really like to hide
under, like, shade and logs, so in the wild,
they'd essentially find something for cover.
So what we're gonna do is we're gonna
provide them that cover but we're still gonna
allow people to be able to see 'em.
- [Brian] We're gonna put the hide here,
but you can actually look through here
and see inside the hide.
- That's why we're building it up right here
on the side of the walls, so we're gonna get this all thick,
like a big mound round and sorta make her burrow for her.
- Ah, perfect, like it, like it.
So now that Bruce has this done, you can really kinda see
what he was talking about, we have higher areas over here,
and we have almost like a makeshift burrow
that you can actually see from this side,
planted a few plants in here,
probably do a little more decoration,
but what we want to have is an area
where the bird eater or the big purple spider
is very comfortable but at the same time,
we want people to be able to see 'em.
So I think they can hide right down here,
they'll feel really comfortable
because they'll be in a little bit of a den area,
but you can still actually see the animal,
should be absolutely amazing.
Bruce has everything kinda fixtured out for the most part,
we'll do a little more decoration I'm sure,
obviously with the arboreal stuff, all that type of thing.
But it looks really good and the thing that I really love
about this is, honestly, this didn't cost us a lot.
I mean, we used little scraps of Universal Rocks stuff,
it was really cheap, it was all about being artistic,
obviously we have soil, vermiculite,
we have a little perlite, few plants,
a few things like that.
So I'll let you kinda get done with a handful of things,
that just kinda making this thing look beautiful,
but there you guys have it.
The arachnid wall is basically done,
I mean, it's gonna be done in another hour or two.
And like I said, we're gonna feed the tarantulas in a vlog,
that should be absolutely epic,
and then we're gonna actually move 'em, which,
that's where your job comes in,
because there's some of those I'm not moving.
- Oh yeah, you know I got it, no worries.
- Can you imagine moving the big bird eater,
oh my god, and that purple one, crazy.
It's gonna be an awesome, epic, epic, epic vlog.
There it is guys, arachnid wall from start to finish.
And with that said guys,
I'm gonna go ahead and end the vlog.
I realize we didn't have, like, animals
and a whole bunch other stuff,
but I hope that you guys enjoyed the journey
of seeing how we're building that wall
and maybe it inspired you if you want to
make your own kinda naturalistic cages.
It's all about just using your artistic abilities
and trying to make something cool.
Of course it's great when I have Bruce
and I have Laurie to help me out
because by myself I might've been lost.
With that said, I'm gonna go ahead and end the vlog
and just wish you guys an amazing day, evening,
whenever you happen to be watching.
'Cause your support means the world to me
and I truly love you so much.
Can you do me a couple favors before we get outta here?
Can you smash that like button,
turn those post notifications on
so you know when I upload a video, make sure to comment,
let me know how you liked this video.
If you're excited to come see the arachnid wall
at some point, be kind to someone today,
and I promise, I will see you guys tomorrow.
(funky music)